


The Adventure of the Underground Angel

by ClearBrightLight



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-26 19:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClearBrightLight/pseuds/ClearBrightLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock stalked into Lestrade's office without knocking.  Lestrade looked up from his paperwork, devoid of surprise, but still slightly irritated.  "Well, good morning, gentlemen.  To what do I owe the pleasure?"</p><div>
  <p><br/>"You missed one," announced Sherlock, tossing the neatly-folded newspapers onto the desk.  Lestrade rescued his coffee adroitly.</p>
</div><div>
  <p><br/>"Care to explain?" Lestrade asked, looking from the newspapers to Sherlock, and then to John, who could only shrug.</p>
</div><div>
  <p><br/>"Don't ask me," he answered, "I haven't even had any caffeine yet."</p>
</div><div>
  <p><br/>Lestrade waved him towards the miniature coffee-maker on top of the filing cabinet.  "Well, Sherlock?  Missed one what?"</p>
</div><div>
  <p><br/>"A murder, of course," replied the detective.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>
    <br/>
    <em>Less than two months after his return from the dead, Sherlock Holmes faces a mysterious man stalking the maze of the London Underground.  Still mistrusted by much of Scotland Yard, but accompanied by the steadfast John Watson, the Consulting Detective will pit his wits against a deadly drug and a killer with a hero complex.</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

The room was still familiar, but in an unfamiliar way; John Watson had not lived in the spare bedroom of 221B for almost three years. His conscious mind knew it, and had fitted himself back into the old routine with barely a hitch, but his subconscious was a little slower on the uptake.

So when the door burst open with a loud bang far too early one morning, John found his hands scrabbling beneath his pillow in search of a weapon that was not there, before he registered where he was and who had woken him.

"John!"

Sherlock Holmes stood in the doorway, and John felt the familiar swoop in his stomach; he was starting to think that the thrill of remembering every morning that Sherlock was not dead was never going to wear off.

"Whuzzgoinonthen?" he mumbled, tongue lagging several yards behind his brain, adrenaline rush dying away to leave him still distinctly sleepy.

"Get up -- we need to go to the Yard, they've made a blunder. As usual. Come on, we're leaving in five minutes."

John sat up, blinking blearily, just in time to see Sherlock's dressing gown flutter down the stairs. He yawned, wide enough to crack his jaw, and tried to focus his sleep-befogged mind enough to make a decision between shower or breakfast, as it was clearly going to be one of those days. God, how he had missed this.

Six minutes later, having barely had time to shave and throw on whatever clothing was cleanest and fell most readily to hand, he was on the street being bundled into a cab by an impatient (and, as usual, perfectly dapper) Sherlock, on their way to Scotland Yard. John had not yet made the effort to ask him what they were doing, still mostly occupied with staying awake; he assumed that eventually, Sherlock would explain himself.

Sherlock crouched in silence at the other end of the cab, several newspapers spread out across his knees. He flicked back and forth between them, intent and focused. John watched his eyes scanning across paragraphs faster than most people read short sentences, and did not doubt that he took in every word.

Upon arrival, John followed his regal back through the halls of Scotland Yard in comfortable silence, nodding greetings at those who called to them. It had been six weeks since the return of the Consulting Detective, and two weeks since he had started showing up with his unofficial medical expert again, and the novelty was wearing off. They didn't attract all that much attention any more, bar the usual friendliness (towards John) or wary respect (towards Sherlock.) Sherlock cut through the bustle and noise like a tall ship in a busy harbor, and John followed willingly in his wake.

Sherlock stalked into Lestrade's office without knocking. Lestrade looked up from his paperwork, devoid of surprise, but still slightly irritated. "Well, good morning, gentlemen. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You missed one," announced Sherlock, tossing the neatly-folded newspapers onto the desk. Lestrade rescued his coffee adroitly.

"Care to explain?" Lestrade asked, looking from the newspapers to Sherlock, and then to John, who could only shrug.

"Don't ask me," he answered, "I haven't even had any caffeine yet."

Lestrade waved him towards the miniature coffee-maker on top of the filing cabinet. "Well, Sherlock? Missed one what?"

"A murder, of course," replied the detective, reaching out and tapping the top newspaper with one long finger. Lestrade frowned, leaned over and read out the title.

"What, this? 'Fatal heart attack in Oxford Circus station'? How is that a murder?"

"He miscalculated," Sherlock said, shaking his head. "It was never supposed to lead to death."

"Ooo-kay," Lestrade sighed, leaning back in his chair. "For the sake of us mere mortals, I'm gonna need you to lay it out from the beginning. And don't skip any steps, it's too early for your leaps of logic."

John finally figured out which buttons to push, and ended up with a steaming cup of something that vaguely resembled coffee. At least, it was dark, hot, and hopefully contained caffeine. He perched on the side of Lestrade's desk and watched Sherlock lay out half a dozen folded sheets of paper like a card trick.

"Four weeks ago," Sherlock began, "Liverpool Street Station. A man falls onto the tracks due to a sudden dizzy spell. Rescued by a passer-by. Grateful family still seeking to contact the good samaritan. Three weeks ago: Notting Hill Gate. Elderly woman takes a tumble down an escalator. Broken hip, comforted by a passing paramedic. Name not mentioned. Two weeks ago: Bank. Middle-aged man, sudden cardiac arrest, successfully revived by off-duty doctor in the crowd. No one caught his name. Six days ago: Oxford Circus. Elderly man, unexpected heart attack. A passerby performed CPR, he was rushed to the hospital, but unable to be resuscitated. Do you see the pattern now?"

"No. Well, I mean, yes," admitted Lestrade, "but how can you be sure -- "

"Oh, come on, look at them, really look!" Sherlock stabbed his finger at the trail he had laid out, exasperated. "Every station is a junction on the Central line, assuring lots of traffic, lots of potential victims. All of the attacks occurred just after the peak of evening rush hour: space to work, but enough people around to guarantee a range of targets and a sizeable audience. All the victims are random and unrelated, targets of opportunity, but none of them suspicious: no unexplained heart attacks in twenty-year-olds, he chose his victims well. All of them on a Thursday night, assuring the story would be the focus of water-cooler gossip the next morning, then forgotten by the time the weekend was over."

"Or maybe Thursday is just his day off," Lestrade suggested, frowning, drawn in despite his natural skepticism.

"Could be," Sherlock allowed, "but the psychology of it is important, too. All the attacks are within a single zone -- the most populous zone, true, but it suggests that he doesn't have the cash to spare on an extended ticket. He clearly has medical training, but he's not one of the more visible or well-paid branches of the science: not a researcher, and certainly not a surgeon. I'd venture to say not even a trauma worker, but possibly a paramedic, more likely a nurse. He might be a med student on his way up the ladder, but that's least likely of all; he has access to drugs, knowledge of how to use them, and sufficient practice with lifesaving techniques to be comfortable assuming authority in a panicking crowd. But he feels marginalized. Ignored. He's been saving people for years, but feels no one has noticed him because he's always behind the scenes, overshadowed by more impressive figures. He thinks he's a hero," the detective sneered, "and deserves recognition. He craves it."

"Drugs?" John asked, picking up the obituary and scanning it. "You think he's drugging them?"

"Definitely. Oh, possibly not the first two: the first might have been genuine, given him the taste that lead to the craving, and the second could have been accomplished by a simple shove in the right direction. But heart failure, twice in two weeks? That has to be chemically induced."

"Huh." Lestrade was convinced, but still frowning. "How do you propose to prove any of this?"

"Get me the CCTV feeds from the stations, the ones they use to spot potential suicides." Sherlock leaned back, vindicated and practically preening. "I'll pick him out for you."

While Lestrade made a phone call, John read through the other three highlighted articles. When he looked up, Sherlock was studying him. "What?"

"You're nodding, so I assume you agree with my chain of reasoning."

"Yes," John agreed, "although I doubt I'd have been able to put it together if you hadn't explained."

Sherlock waved an airy hand. "Of course not. But that's not what's bothering you. What are you not following?"

A lot, probably, given the elevated train of thought Sherlock usually persued. But specifically... "You've convinced me how he's doing it," John said slowly, "but not why. I mean, if he wants to kill random people, the tube's a good place to do it, but why does he stick around to save their lives?"

"Because he's not doing it to kill," Sherlock insisted. "Oxford Circus was a mistake, not an escalation. He's not a murderer, he's a saviour -- or that's how he sees himself, anyway. A guardian angel. But the opportunities to genuinely save a life in public are few and far between, so he's resorted to fabricating them because he wants the recognition, the power. You've saved lives," Sherlock reminded him, sliding into his personal space, pale eyes penetrating. "How did it feel, the first time you realized that the only reason the person in front of you was still alive was due to you? That rush, the pride, the victory -- you still remember it, don't you?"

"Yes," John admitted.

"Irresistable," Sherlock all but purred. He stepped yet closer, looming over John, relentless. "Unforgettable. And it happens every time, with every soul you save. It's why you were drawn to medicine, and to war. You could, all by yourself, make that much of a difference. He craves that feeling; he wants what you have."

John shifted back, his discomfort growing. Sherlock's peering interest slowly faded into a frown, but as he drew breath to speak, Lestrade interrupted, and John turned to face him, stepping out of Sherlock's shadow with reluctant relief.

"All right," announced Lestrade, hanging up the reciever. "The stations don't keep footage beyond a week, so the only tape I can get you is from last week at Oxford Circus. It should be pretty obvious who we're looking for, right? I mean, he'll be the one doing CPR."

"Yes, but what I really want to see is how he administers the drug," answered Sherlock, "and how he picks his victims. I should be able to theorize from one instance, but it is a pity we can't see the others."

"They offered to post it, but I said I'd send a courier. We don't have the time to wait." Lestrade looked up, meeting Sherlock's faintly impressed glance with a grimace. "I'm not a complete idiot, Sherlock -- I know why you rushed over here at seven o'clock in the bloody morning. Today's Thursday."

Horror dawned on John. "You think he'll strike again tonight."

"I don't think -- I know." Sherlock looked excited rather than grim. He spun to face John. "Think about it: his mission is to save lives, and last week he failed. He didn't get his emotional fix, so the craving will be stronger than ever. He'll have perfected his method by now; it's the only opportunity to catch him, now, before anyone else dies by accident." He strode away and began pacing. "We'll need to be in place at least an hour before the rush begins -- he probably gets there early, too. That leaves us until four, so we have nine hours. How long until the courier arrives?"

"I've only just sent him, Sherlock," Lestrade protested. "It'll be at least a couple of hours."

"Fine," Sherlock snapped, pulling out his cell and texting at the speed of sound. "I'll be back by eleven, then. Come on, John." And he swept from the office without another word. John hurriedly thanked Lestrade for the coffee, and trotted after him.

He followed Sherlock into a cab back to Baker Street, feeling a gnawing sensation in his midsection that had nothing to do with bad coffee and no food.

Upon arrival back at the flat, Sherlock immediately divested himself of scarf, coat, and jacket, and flung himself down on the couch to sink into a brown study. John knew better than to disturb him, so he made himself a long-overdue breakfast, with an actual proper cup of tea, and sat down with what was left of the morning's paper. Sherlock had already clipped out anything with any possible relation to crime, which left him most of the sports section, world news, and the movie reviews. He gave up on reading when the violin made its appearance. As Sherlock moodily plucked and swooped, composing a jagged symphony to mirror his darting thoughts, John poked around on the internet, feeling just as morose.

It was bugging him, the way Sherlock had outlined the killer's motives. John was not immune to Sherlock's barbs yet, it seemed. Nor was he above admitting that Sherlock was right. Yes, he liked saving lives. And yes, occasionally his favorite part of the job was being thanked, being able to tell an anxious family that their loved one would survive, would walk again, seeing the joy blooming in their faces, and the gratitude. Did that make him an awful human being?

No. Probably not.

But did that make him, in Sherlock's eyes, the same as the kind of human being who would drug innocent people on the subway in order to fabricate an emotional high?

"Absolutely not," Sherlock growled from where he was slumped in his armchair, sawing at his violin, which was propped up between his knees as though it were a miniature cello.

"Sorry, what?" John asked, shaking off his reverie.

"You have nothing in common with our killer tube angel."

John stared at him, and Sherlock glared back. Astonishment and amusement warred briefly, and amusement won. John snorted with laughter. "Killer _what_ now?"

Sherlock waved his bow in a dismissive way. "I've never been particularly good at naming serial killers," he groused. "It is the one great failing of my imagination. But you," and here the bow stabbed in John's direction, "are not he, by whatever name we end up calling him."

"How did you -- never mind." John looked away. "Thanks."

"I know you," Sherlock reminded him. "I know how you think, and how readily you empathize -- sometimes with the wrong people. It's been worrying at you since the Yard." He tipped his head on one side, eyeing John down the length of his bow. "You save lives on a regular basis," he went on, voice dropping low in a rare moment of analytical sincerity. "Mine, most frequently. And yet you never ask to be recognized for it; goodness knows _I_ never thank you. If you craved praise as an impetus to do the right thing, you'd have abandoned me years ago. Your ego is not your motivation. You are a hero because it is in your nature to be so; to behave otherwise would be repugnant to you. You are the epitome of selflessness, while he embodies the selfish. He is your diametric opposite." Sherlock presented these facts as if they should be self-evident, as if anyone with half a brain should be able to see the truth.

John found that his mouth was hanging open, his chest was suffused with warmth, his head spinning, and his shoulders were attempting to come to attention. When he could speak, he managed, "Didn't you tell me once not to make people into heroes?"

"I didn't 'make you' into anything," Sherlock retorted, surging to his feet and settling his violin in its proper place at the crook of his shoulder. "You were a hero long before you met me. Now, are we done with this subject?"

"I -- suppose so." John was dazed. If Sherlock had crossed the room and smashed the violin over his head, he could hardly have been more surprised.

"Good, now you can stop thinking about it. You're deafening, it's putting me off." Sherlock turned his back and resumed playing.

Ah. That was more normal.

Sherlock halted in the middle of an arpeggio and looked back over his shoulder. "And by the way," he added, "I find that I'm a little insulted. Offended, actually."

"What? Why?"

"To think that you consider me idiotic enough to associate with the sort of man you were imagining for any length of time." He snorted, bow poised over the strings. "I have better taste in companions than that. I keep you around to be a shining example, not to encourage my own sociopathic tendancies. And to make tea."

John pressed a hand to his face to hide his grin. "I apologize for -- casting aspersions on your intelligence, then." What he really meant was _thank you_.

The twitch of Sherlock's profile betrayed his own smile. "You're forgiven." _You're welcome._ The arpeggio picked up where it had left off.

John listened for a minute. "What about 'the Underground Angel'?" he suggested. "As a name for this guy."

The music paused again, suspended, as Sherlock considered. "Fine," he decided. "Your titles improve with practice. You may name all my serial killers."

John smiled, and got up to make tea.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock finds the killer's name.

 

 

At ten-thirty, Sherlock's mobile finally pinged, and he dived at it so hastily he nearly dropped his violin.

"Lestrade?" asked John.

"No -- Molly," answered the detective, laying the instrument back in its case. "Get your coat, we're off again. She'll meet us."

Back at the Yard, Sherlock nearly mowed down a young officer as he strode into Lestrade's office.

"That's a little creepy," the D.I. commented. "You're sure you're not clairvoyant, right?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock snapped. "What are you talking about?"

"That young bloke just leaving was my courier -- I just got the disc. I was about to text you."

"Impeccable timing," Sherlock crowed, rubbing his hands together. "Lead the way."

Lestrade gathered up a pile of notes and motioned for them to proceed him out of the office. As they threaded their way between desks to the AV room, he filled them in on his morning's activities.

"I called around to the surviving victims. They all had nothing but good things to say about the man who helped them, but none of them got his name -- or, well, none got his real name, anyway. First one, Peter Stark, said he gave his name as Bill; Rachel Howell, the lady who fell down the stairs, said Reuben; Desmond Farleigh never caught the guy's name at all, being in cardiac arrest at the time; and nobody at the fourth scene where Victor Friesland died thought to ask except the actual paramedics, and by that time he'd scarpered. All three survivors describe the same man, or pretty close: late thirties, pale face, dark hair, navy blue knit cap, brown leather jacket. Carries a messenger bag with, presumably, his ambush supplies in. And has an earring in one ear."

"That should make identification fairly simple, right?" John wondered if actually finding this guy was going to be as interesting for Sherlock as deducing his motives had been, or whether they'd be off on another case by the afternoon, leaving Lestrade to do the cleanup.

"We'll see." Sherlock glanced at his mobile as it pinged, and fired off a text in return. "Molly will meet us in the AV room," he announced.

"Course she will," Lestrade grumbled under his breath. "She'd follow you into Hell if you winked at her." He shared a sympathetic glance with John, and ushered them all into the little viewing room. Sherlock paced in the tight space behind them as Lestrade turned on a monitor and inserted the disc. "Okay, so the newspaper said Friesland had his attack at six-thirty, so if we go ten minutes before that -- "

"No," interrupted Sherlock, "start at five o'clock. I want to see how he chooses them."

"You think he gets there that early?" asked John.

"Run it in fast-forward, if you're bored; I'll still pick him out for you."

Lestrade raised his eyebrows, but cued up the tape to start at 5pm. He set it running at four times normal speed, and they all leaned forwards to watch. There were four cameras on the screen: two of them were long views down platforms, showing the commuters and the tracks, one was of the turnstiles, and one covered the whole lobby and the exits. The resolution was not the greatest; the footage was grainy and shadowed, and colors were hard to distinguish. The overall impression was one of constant movement.

John frowned. It was remarkable, he mused, how many youngish, dark-haired men in dark jackets and caps there were in London.

Beside him, practically breathing down his neck, Sherlock was intently focused. John wondered if he had learned to suppress the need to blink.

There came a timid knock on the door, and John turned to let Molly in. She smiled at him tentatively, and he returned it with warmth; he had long since forgiven her part in Sherlock's deception, but she always seemed to need reassuring on that point. She clutched her pile of papers to her chest and came to watch the video feed with them in silence, willing to wait for an explanation.

"There," Sherlock announced suddenly, one long arm shooting out towards the platform on the bottom left.

"How can you tell?" Lestrade wondered. "It's not even 5:30 yet." He indicated the clock running in the corner of the screen.

"He's been sitting in that seat, with a good view of the entire platform, for ten minutes," answered Sherlock, tapping the figure which was barely visible in the sea of human traffic. "He's got a newspaper, but he barely ever remembers to turn a page. He's not waiting for a train -- at least one of each line has come through at this point -- but he's not watching for any one specific person, either. If he'd waited this long for someone, he'd be checking his watch, or making calls."

"He could simply be people-watching," John suggested, but Sherlock shook his head.

"No, he's not relaxed enough for that. He's on the hunt. Watch him."

They watched, whenever they could see him through gaps in the moving scenery. The clock ticked rapidly on towards 6pm, and still the man had not shifted. Every time a train pulled in, he scanned the faces around him, then sat back to wait again.

"You're probably right," Lestrade murmured. "It's been, what, forty-five minutes? And he's still just sitting there watching. That's not normal. And he fits the general description, from what I can tell."

"Of course I'm right," Sherlock replied absently, eyes still focused on his quarry.

"Incredible," John breathed, and beside him Molly made a soft noise of agreement. A tiny smile flickered across Sherlock's face, there and gone in the space of a second, swallowed up in predatory concentration.

As the counter cycled closer and closer to 6:30, the tension in the room grew. Even Molly, who had no way of knowing what they were watching for, leaned in with them. When the man they were watching suddenly folded his newspaper and stood, they all twitched.

"Slow it," Sherlock commanded, and Lestrade pushed buttons until the recording was running at normal speed. "There's his target." The detective indicated an elderly man in a bright blue coat who had just exited the train.

They watched as the man in the dark coat followed the man in the bright coat off the platform, losing them both momentarily in the tunnel, and then finding them as they emerged into the larger, better-lit lobby. They saw the younger man cross the older's path, but they didn't bump -- it looked like they barely touched, if at all. John frowned. If the guy was drugging his victims, he would have expected more physical contact . . . .

The dark coat vanished again in the sea of commuters, so they followed the splash of bright blue -- which suddenly disappeared. There was an alteration in the regular flow of traffic: agitation, some people rushing in, others pushing back. A ring formed, and then suddenly they could see their suspect again, bending over the bright blue coat. John shared a glance with Molly, and saw that she recognized the posture too: a medical professional's measured check for airway, breathing, circulation.

The man in the dark cap shoved his bag around behind him and braced up on his knees, beginning chest compressions. They watched him work tirelessly for over three minutes, before he turned and pointed at someone in the crowd. When the woman he had designated put her hand to her ear, he resumed compressions.

"No one called 999 until then?" murmured Molly.

"Crowd mentality," Lestrade responded, voice just as low. "Each one assumes someone else must have already done it."

Two more minutes passed, and they could see the man's pace flagging by the time three real paramedics arrived. They competently, gently, pushed him out of the way. He stayed for maybe half a minute, providing information, and then they watched him step gradually back, and back again, losing himself in the watching throng and disappearing. By the time two of the emergency responders were rushing the victim out on a stretcher and the third was asking questions, he had been gone for almost two minutes.

"And no one saw him leave," John whispered. His fingers itched with the need to get in there and help, irrational as he knew it was; even at a week's remove, even though he knew the man in the bright blue coat had died and there was no way to change that, even though it was nothing more than a dim image on a screen, his instincts were clamoring that he was needed. He clasped his hands behind him to stop them flexing into fists, unconsciously falling into parade rest.

"Too focused on the drama," Lestrade agreed.

"Back it up and run it again," Sherlock demanded. "Just from 6:25 or so."

Rather than watch the screen this time, John watched the other faces in the room. He compared Molly's sympathetic frown with Lestrade's narrow-eyed concentration and the rapt, darting absorption of Sherlock. When Lestrade stopped the feed again, he realized they had all been holding their breath, just a little.

"Well, that didn't tell us much," Sherlock groused, straightening out of his attentive crouch and rotating his shoulders.

"Not much we didn't already know," Lestrade agreed.

"I couldn't quite see the point of initial contact -- the administration of the drug. There were too many people in the way. This man is clever." Sherlock tilted his head. "I wonder if he knew where the cameras were? Or was it just luck?"

"The cameras in the underground are pretty obvious," John offered. "If I can spot them, it's probably safe to assume he can too."

Sherlock pressed his steepled fingers to his lips, humming a response that was neither negative nor positive. His eyes danced sightlessly for a few seconds, then settled on John and, behind him, Molly. "Ah, Molly, lovely," he said, and she jumped. "Do you have it?"

"Yes, just here," she answered, extracting a folder from the stack in her arms. "The coroner at the other hospital owes me a favour, so I asked him to send me Mr. Friesland's autopsy report," she explained, offering it to John, who was closest, but Sherlock slipped between them and intercepted it. "It was ruled natural causes -- he had a dodgy heart."

Sherlock, flicking through the folder at lightening speed, raised an eyebrow in a rare gesture of respect. "This is admirably thorough," he remarked, "for an apparently natural death."

"Doctor Rubens takes his job seriously," Molly agreed.

"He notes here," said Sherlock, angling the folder so that John could see the diagram, "a puncture mark on the shoulder. Most people would not have noticed. Or cared."

"You think he was injected with something," John guessed.

"Something that mimicked the symptoms of a heart attack, yes," Sherlock replied. He flipped a page, and his eyes lit up. "Oh, here -- John, what do you see?"

John took the toxicology report that Sherlock thrust under his nose, scanning through it as quickly as he could. Halfway down the page, something caught his eye. "He's got a bit of hyperkalemia."

"Exactly," Sherlock hissed.

"What?" asked Lestrade.

"Elevated levels of potassium," John explained absently, still reading. He reached out and grabbed the rest of the folder from Sherlock, paging through it until he found the information he wanted. He looked up, meeting three different expressions: Molly's dawning understanding, Lestrade's patient puzzlement, and Sherlock's triumph. "Mr. Friesland had a congenital heart defect, according to his records. His doctor was managing it with Digoxin, also known as digitalis, or digitoxin. It's good for managing certain heart conditions, but it can cause arrhythmia, which can be fatal. If that's what this guy is injecting into his victims -- "

"It would resemble a heart attack in a healthy person, and the symptoms would disappear as the dosage expired," Sherlock finished, "but in this man's case, it would have been a lethal overdose."

"Okay," said Lestrade, finally caught up to the rest of them. "So where is he getting the drugs?"

"Well, if he is actually a paramedic," John began, but Sherlock cut him off with a shake of the head.

"No, a drug that dangerous is tightly rationed, you know that, John."

"He could be cooking it out of foxglove," suggested Molly. She colored lightly as they all turned to look at her. "My granddad had foxglove in his garden, and he always said it was poisonous. It wasn't 'til I got to med school that I actually believed him. The whole plant is loaded with digitoxin -- boil it out of the leaves or the seeds, reduce it to a powder, and mix it with chloroform, and you have an ingestible or injectible solution."

"Why chloroform?" asked Lestrade.

"Because it doesn't bind with water or ether," replied Sherlock in a distracted tone. Suddenly he turned and grabbed Molly by the shoulders. "Oh! Molly, you're a genius!"

"I am? Why?" Molly's face was equal parts pleased and petrified.

"Chloroform!" Sherlock exclaimed, diving for the keyboard. Molly looked relieved to have been released, and stepped back to watch as he skipped rapidly backwards through the footage. "Look here," he commanded, freezing the tape. "We thought he was injecting him at this point, here, where they crossed, but you can see -- look, he never actually touches him!" He thumbed the recording forwards, frame by frame, and the suspect's hand was just visible, dipping into a shirt pocket under his jacket and back out, but never approaching Friesland's arm. Sherlock turned to them, eyes blazing. "He's using chloroform -- probably in an aerosol container of some kind, or a spray bottle -- he's dosing them with chloroform to make them dizzy, which causes the collapse, and then he doesn't inject them until they're already down! That's why the healthy one never reported being jabbed: he was already disoriented and didn't register the needle!" He skipped forwards to where the dark-jacketed figure was bent over -- checking vitals, John had thought, but now as Sherlock pointed he could pick out one hand reaching into the messenger bag and pressing against the bright blue shoulder.

"What kind of delivery system would you say, John?" mused Sherlock, not really listening for an answer. "I'd say a modified breath spray cannister, perhaps, and a plain old disposable syringe -- like some patients use for insulin. Thoughts?"

"Yeah, that sounds great, Sherlock, fine. But how do we find him?" Lestrade demanded. "I can't just put out a bolo for a man who carries breath spray and may or may not be diabetic."

"He's still in his scrubs," John noted. "Under the leather jacket. So you were probably right about him being a nurse."

"Still in uniform at six, so likely on shift all day since eight. Would you say that's blue or green?" pondered Sherlock to himself. "Hard to tell from this footage, but I'd say blue. Blue scrubs, and on the Central Line. That means St. Thomas'." He whipped out his cell, looked up a number, and dialed.

"Hi there," said Sherlock into the phone in a warm, thoughtless tone totally at odds with his calculating expression. The dichotomy of it made the hairs rise on the back of John's neck. "My mother was in last week -- no, no, minor problem, nothing serious, but I wanted to send a thank-you card to the nurse who took care of her -- he was so delightful, really comforting, really knew his stuff. Good show. Could you tell me his name, maybe?"  

Pause. "Oh, this would have been last Thursday, around noon-ish?"  

Pause. "Sure -- the one I particularly wanted to thank was a young man, maybe thirty, about my height -- maybe six feet? -- with dark hair. Round face. Friendly chap, never let Mum panic in the slightest. Wore a diamond stud in his left ear."  

Pause. "Jon Smith? Really? You've _got_ to be kidding me."

Pause. "Yeah, I suppose. Thanks, I'll come by later to drop off a card."  

Pause; Sherlock laughed -- no, _giggled_. "Yes, you caught me -- there might be a phone number inside. Ta very much, love." He tapped his phone to end the call and turned back to them, ignoring their looks of astonishment. "There you are, Lestrade, somewhere to start: Jonathon Culverton Smith."

"It's totally uncanny when you do that, did you know?" John told Sherlock without thinking, and was rewarded with a tiny crooked smile.

"And I'm not sure I approve," Lestrade scolded, "but as it's our only lead, I'll run him down . . . " His fingers were already dancing over the keys. Less than a minute later, he announced, "He's in the system. Arrested two years ago for a drunk and disorderly, nothing since."

"Self-medicating for his inferiority complex," Sherlock mused.

"And that's definitely him," Lestrade added, turning the monitor to show their angel's face on the screen. "Even if he hadn't got the earring yet."

The man glared at them from the screen, and they stared back for a long moment in silence.

At length, Lestrade sat back. "Okay, Sherlock, it's just past noon now. What would you say should be our next move?"

"Stakeout," answered Sherlock without hesitation. "We have no hard evidence, so we'll need to catch him as close to in the act as possible. Two plain-clothes officers in each station."

"In every station on the Central Line?" Lestrade demanded, aghast, but Sherlock cut him off with a decisive shake of the head.

"No. He has no distinct pattern that I can see, but as of yet, he has never hit the same station twice. If he stays true to form, and sticks within his stomping ground of the first zone, he has only two stations left: Bond Street and Tottenham Court. There is a third possiblilty, which I regard as very much less likely, but still it exists: if for some reason he was enraged rather than merely frustrated or traumatized by last week's abysmal failure, he may elect to repeat Oxford Circus. I would regard the odds against it as at least four to one, but the possibility must be addressed."

"Okay, that's more reasonable; I can probably swing six officers. Let me get on to the chief, and I'll text you later. Go on," Lestrade added, not without affection, "you've given me all the information, and I can see you're itching to be off doing other things. It's all paperwork from here on out. I assume you'll want to be at one of the stations, yeah? Know which one yet?"

"No," answered Sherlock, already opening the door to usher John from the room, "but it probably won't be Oxford Circus. I'll let you know. You'll be in place by four?"

Lestrade sighed. "I suppose so. See you then."

John nodded a hasty good-bye to the D.I. and Molly as he was sucked out the door again in Sherlock's wake.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestrade brings some bad news.

Sherlock went home to do some serious thinking, and John spent the afternoon running errands. His last stop, after grocer's and laundry, was the stationer's for the cards Sherlock had ordered last week. Now that he was officially back in business (and more in need of private cases for purely financial reasons, since he flatly refused to be dependent any longer than absolutely necessary on his brother, although personally John thought Mycroft was still working off his debt,) Sherlock had allowed John to persuade him that he needed to keep cards on hand with his name and contact information on them, to hand out to potential clients. Sherlock had argued that his name was distinctive enough, which was especially true given that the media frenzy had yet to totally die down, but John had managed to convince him that the majority of people were idiots, and needed a physical reminder. Also, it was a status thing: business cards impressed people. Sherlock sneered that people were easily impressed, and John agreed with him, but the stationer's had a sale on, so the cards were designed and ordered.

John examined one as the girl behind the counter rang him up. He approved of the layout Sherlock had chosen. It was simple, elegant, and straightforward: all in black text on cream-colored stock, a prim "Sherlock Holmes" followed by a smaller, loopier font reading "Consulting Detective", and Sherlock's new mobile number and the address of his website at the bottom.

As he shoved his way through the door of the flat, bags looped around hands and wrists, he called, "Hey, Sherlock, I got your new cards. Want to see?" and then noticed they had company: Lestrade. "Oh, hi, Greg. Are we on, then?"

Lestrade turned to say hello, but Sherlock, scowling like a thundercloud, wasn't done with him.

"You _have_ to convince him, Lestrade," he insisted. "This man Smith may not be _deliberately_ killing people, but that doesn't mean he's not dangerous! Look at the mistakes he's made already -- "

"Sherlock, I _know!"_ Lestrade said, exasperated and weary, giving John a nod before turning back into the argument John had obviously just interrupted. "I tried to change his mind, really I did. But he still doesn't trust you."

Sherlock made a frustrated grimace and turned away. John divested himself of his bags and came to join them in the sitting room.

"What's going on?"

Sherlock hissed something angular in German at the window, which Lestrade ignored.

"Superintendant MacKenzie won't authorize any stakeout on the Central Line today."

John looked back and forth between Lestrade's defeated stance and Sherlock's angry back. "Why not?" Lestrade sighed and glanced at Sherlock, and then John understood.  

He felt his ears growing hot, and didn't care who saw it. "MacKenzie doesn't want to give you anything because it's Sherlock's information you're relying on, am I right?"

Lestrade's shoulders slumped even further. "Got it in one."

"Did he not get the memo Mycroft had circulated? Has he not been reading the papers for the last month?" John demanded. "What the hell is wrong with the man?"

"I don't know, but he really hates you, Sherlock. One drop of your name, and he couldn't shout me out of his office fast enough." Lestrade scrubbed a hand over his face, looking grey with worry. "You know he's going to strike again, and so do I. But until someone other than you or me can prove it, we're on our own. And I do mean on our own: I'm off duty tonight and able to do whatever I want, but I was only able to convince a couple of guys to come. I've got Harris and Morrison as volunteers, they both worship the ground you walk on, but other than that, it's you, and me, and John, if he's willing -- "

"Of course I'm willing," John snapped.

Lestrade nodded at him, a swift snap of a motion that was almost military, and John caught himself standing to attention to return it. The look that accompanied the gesture was fraught with shared temper, determination, and faith: Lestrade, at least, believed in Sherlock Holmes, and was tired of taking flak for it. "And that's it," the D.I. finished grimly.

"Will the five of us be enough, Sherlock?" asked John, and had the satisfaction of seeing Sherlock's neck and shoulders lose a hair of their indignation.

"Five is fine, I can work with five," he said distractedly, turning back to face them with his eyes dancing in the way that meant he was calculating something. "Lestrade, I'd put you at Oxford Circus, and Morrison and Harris at Bond Street."

"You know I'd feel better if we had one real officer at each station," Lestrade tried to protest, but Sherlock overrode him with a cold, "John goes with me," and Lestrade dropped the argument before it started.

"Don't think I don't see what he's doing," Lestrade said to John as he saw him out after a hasty five-minute discussion of strategy. "He's putting me at the least likely station, so I can play the cavalry for you two. I dunno how he's worked out that he's put you at the most likely spot, but I'm sure he has the odds done out to six decimal places somehow."

"Yeah, probably. Do you mind?" asked John.

Lestrade grinned viciously. "Mind? God, no! I _want_ Sherlock to be the one to catch the bastard. And _I_ want to be the one who stands to attention in front of that pompous oaf MacKenzie and gets to say, 'Oh no, sir, we had nothing to do with it: as you recall, sir, you told us to stay out of it because there wasn't enough evidence. Sherlock Holmes is the one who put it all together and pulled it off. We just showed up with the paddy wagon and the handcuffs.'"

John impulsively stuck out his hand, and Lestrade seized it in a conspiratorial handshake.

"Thanks. And good luck," John told him as a cab pulled up.

"And to you. Try to keep _himself_ from doing anything too stupid, yeah? See you after rush hour."

At the top of the stairs, John nearly collided with Sherlock, who was dressed to go out. "Don't bother taking your jacket off, John. We're going now."

"Nope, you'll have to give me five seconds to stick the ice cream in the freezer, or you'll be the one to clean up the mess this evening when we get back." John slipped around Sherlock, ignoring his grumbles about wasted seconds costing lives, and hastily shoved all the perishables he had bought into the fridge, slotting them in around biohazards and leftovers with the ease of long practice and the thrill of familiarity.  

Sherlock stood in the doorway, watching him, pointedly _not_ fidgiting with agitation.

"Are you really worried about the safety of random tube commuters, Sherlock?" John wondered idly as he shifted containers about, trying to make space for the milk. "Or are you more concerned with MacKenzie's slight to your deductive reasoning?"

"Can't I be both?" Sherlock asked in reply, but his tone was not as flippant as John would have expected. He looked up with a question on his face, and saw that Sherlock scowling at the floor. "This is _my_ city, John," he said quietly but with force, eyes flashing fiercely. "I spent _three years_ putting out fires and killing poisonous insects all over the world trying to make it safe again, and now this -- this _animal_ is threatening it. _My_ London. My _home._ I won't have it." He shook his head with a disdainful sniff. "The insulting part about it is that he's not even particularly clever; if he were actually as smart as he thinks he is, he wouldn't be so dangerous. Come on, you're done. Everything else will keep. Let's go."

He turned in a dramatic swirl of dark coat, leaving John to shut the fridge, speechless.

_Well, that was unexpected._

"John!" came the imperious command from the bottom of the stairs, and John shook himself out of his daze.

After a second's hesitation, he decided not to run upstairs for his gun; Lestrade's scheme to endear Sherlock to his higher-ups would be severely marred if he had to arrest John at the same time for posession of an illegal firearm, and besides, there was far too much chance of hitting an innocent bystander in a crowded tube station at rush hour. They would just have to rely on their wits (well, Sherlock's wits) and their fists.

Before Sherlock returned to drag him bodily out the door, John tore open the box of new cards and stuffed a stack of them into his pocket, just in case.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a wrestling match, Sherlock gets punched in the nose, and the case is closed.

 

They arrived at the Tottenham Court Station at ten minutes to five, and the place was already teeming with surly, unobservant people jostling in every direction. After a moment's reconnoiter, Sherlock picked a spot just above the top of the escalators. They had no view of the tracks, but they would see everyone who came off a train as they funneled by in search of a way out.

They stood together by the wall, shoulder to shoulder, letting the rush-hour traffic flow and break around them as they scanned the people exiting the arches of the tunnels. Several caps made John's breath catch in his throat, but each time the person underneath was the wrong gender, or had hair too fair, or skin too dark, and he forced himself to relax again.

All of a sudden, he felt Sherlock tense beside him, and at the same time said, "Sherlock, there -- I see him."

"Yes," said the detective, scanning the rest of the crowd, reading lines of influence invisible to anyone else, like a chess master scanning the board of a game already in progress. He swore under his breath. "We're almost too late -- he's chosen a victim already, he's moving in. We don't have time!" He raised his cell, speed dial already calling out, and snapped, "Lestrade, we've got him. I have to intercept. Get here now. Tottenham Court Station." He pressed a few buttons, slid the phone into his shirt pocket, spun and grabbed John by the shoulders. "John, listen, this is vital," he hissed, voice low enough that it wouldn't carry, lips close to John's ear. "For the next five minutes, I need you to forget all your training and follow my lead. When I give the signal, I need you to _panic_. Got it? You are _not_ a doctor. Understand?"

"I -- fine, okay. But what --"

"Good, follow me." Sherlock turned and strode rapidly into the crowd, towing John along by one sleeve. Not having Sherlock's height advantage, it took John a minute to realize that he was aiming for a point in front of their quarry -- no, between their quarry and _his_ intended quarry, a woman in her early seventies with a large flowered handbag who looked a little like Mrs. Hudson's sister.  

As soon as Sherlock had inserted them into the proper stream of traffic, he released John's sleeve and slowed, letting people pass them, allowing Jonathon Smith's dark leather jacket to draw a few ranks nearer. When Sherlock was satisfied, he darted a glance left, then right, gave John a swift wink, and then stumbled sideways, bumping into two commuters at once. When they protested, he stuttered an apology, then reeled away to ram into someone else. People were noticing now, turning to look at him, drawing away. He spun back to John, hands outstretched, and John caught him as his legs folded, easing him down to the floor.

He was pale as a sheet, and actually sweating. His breath came in shallow, tortured gasps, and he generally was giving an excellent performance of a man in some kind of cardiac crisis -- so good a performance, in fact, that John felt a spike of genuine concern. Was it even physically possible to fake a cold sweat, or was something really wrong with him?

"Help," Sherlock wheezed, clutching weakly at his lapels, eyes frantically scanning the crowd. "Need help -- my heart -- "

  
_Sherlock's heart is fine,_ John told himself firmly, before he remembered that staying calm was exactly what he'd been ordered _not_ to do. He diverted the hand that had automatically reached out to take a pulse, changing the movement to smoothing the curls back from Sherlock's damp face. _Not_ a doctor's gesture.

He looked up at the gathering throng, allowing worry and desperation to flood his face, hoping he did not look _too_ grotesque. "Is anyone here a doctor? Please, can anyone help?"

"Let me through, please, I'm a paramedic," ordered a firm voice, and the crowd parted to reveal Jon Culverton Smith: young, jacketed, capped, with his bag over one shoulder. Just the man they were looking for. Over his shoulder, John caught a last glimpse of a flowered handbag as his elderly intended victim disappeared around a corner, safe and sound.

Smith crouched on the other side of Sherlock where John had laid him on the cold station floor and smiled reassuringly. Except that John could see a familiar shrouded light in his eyes: just a little too much enjoyment, a little more eagerness than the situation called for. It was the same expression Sherlock wore at a particularly interesting crime scene, that look of _yes yes YES this is what I live for_ that the wearer knew was indecent, but it shone through any attempt to mask it despite his best efforts.  

"What seems to be the trouble?"

"I don't know, he just collapsed!" John allowed stress to force his voice high and wavering, suppressing years of training. The 'paramedic' gave his shoulder a quick squeeze (John forced himself not to flinch away) and opened his bag to pull out a stethoscope. Sherlock's breathing immediately worsened, and he transferred one hand to Smith's shirt front, holding on for dear life, effectively tangling the stethoscope in his fingers. John's anxiety evaporated. There was no reason to prevent having his heart checked unless there was nothing wrong; Sherlock might be able to fabricate distress on a surface level to an impressive degree, but if someone put their ear to his chest, his perfectly healthy heartbeat would betray the ruse in seconds. He was fine, it was all an act, and now John could focus again.

"It's all right," Smith soothed, stroking Sherlock's hand reassuringly as he tried to free his stethoscope from the clutching fingers. "Just try and breathe easy. What's your name?"

"Sh-Sherlock," was the breathless reply, and John tried not to start with surprise. So they weren't going to have false identities, then?

"Sherlock? Interesting name. You can call me Jack." He glanced at John, indicating the trapped stethoscope with an air of _help me out here, will you?_ "And you are?"

John looked to Sherlock, who blinked in encouragement as he appeared to struggle for air. Apparently he wanted Smith to know who they were. "I'm John. I'm his friend."

"Nice to meet you both," said Smith, finally managing to free his equipment, although Sherlock's hand stayed locked on his shirt. He settled the buds in his ears, and then a thought seemed to strike him. "Wait, Sherlock and John? Like Sherlock Holmes, the detective?" He looked down, then up at John with dawning suspicion. "So you'd be John Watson, then, right? Aren't you a doctor?" The last word was almost vitriolic under the veil of curiosity.

"Oh well," sighed Sherlock in his normal tone of voice, his breathing abruptly regular again. "I suppose that's the price of fame, eh, John?"

Smith gaped at him. He slipped the stethescope into the open neck of Sherlock's shirt and listened for a few seconds. Sherlock made no effort now to stop him, smiling disdainfully. Smith sat back. "There's nothing wrong with your heart," he accused.

"No, I just needed to get your attention," Sherlock agreed, and then his face darkened abruptly. "Nor was there anything wrong with Peter, or Rachel, or Desmond, until you came along."

"Who?" Smith did a very good imitation of puzzled innocence, but John noticed he was trying just a little too hard to surreptitiously pull back from Sherlock's death-grip on his shirt. "I don't know what you -- "

"All those people you 'saved,' Jonathon Culverton Smith -- did you not even try to remember their names? Poor Peter Stark, who almost fell under a train. Did he really have a funny turn? Was he secretly suicidal? Was it just coincidence? Or was he your first try? And then dear old Rachel Howell. Did you actually have to push her down the stairs, or did the chloroform do that for you?" Sherlock's voice was deceptively smooth, but it was carrying; the ring of onlookers, now unsure whether they were witnessing a medical emergency or watching a play, began muttering amongst themselves. Smith, who had blanched at the mention of his own name, was steadily growing redder and redder, although his expression managed to remain steadfastly polite and curious.

"Desmond Farleigh was the best, though, wasn't he?" Sherlock continued, eyes boring into his target. Although he was lying on the dirty tile of a tube station, only John's arm under his shoulder keeping his hair out of the scum on the ground, he was magnetic, clearly in the position of power. "Oh, that must have been magnificent -- you stopped his heart, right there in the station, and managed to start it again, all by yourself. Who needs _doctors?_ You can do it all alone. Your greatest triumph. You just _had_ to do that again."

"Listen, mate," Smith said to John with a valiant attempt at a smile, "I dunno what's wrong with your friend here, but he's clearly -- "

"And then there was Victor Friesland," Sherlock overrode him in a voice like steel, and Smith froze. "Poor Victor, who you couldn't save. You had no way of knowing he was already taking digitalis for his heart, did you? You didn't know you were giving him a massive overdose from which he had no possible chance of recovery."

Smith made an angry gesture, dropping the stethoscope. "It's not my fault the idiots at the hospital gave him the wrong treatment! If they'd given him lidocaine like I told them --"

There was a short silence as John and Smith locked eyes, realising in the same split second that he had fatally revealed himself. Sherlock showed all his teeth in a grin, dark and savage in his victory.

Smith gave an inarticulate shout of rage. His hand came up, holding something that glinted in the fluorescent lighting. "Look out," Sherlock barked, shoving hard with the hand still braced on John's chest, and John jerked his head back, feeling the hiss of air as a naked needle barely missed his jaw. Before he could recover his balance, Smith had lashed out, landing a vicious left-handed punch to Sherlock's nose, and the detective lost his hold on Smith's shirt as his head cracked back against the tiled floor. Smith's other hand came down, syringe at the ready, but John grabbed his arm and wrestled him up and away. They struggled roughly, devoid of grace or strategy, Smith attempting to force the needle into John's neck, his eyes wild and his teeth bared, while John fought to gain enough traction on the slick floor to pin the taller, heavier man down.

Suddenly John felt a hand clamp down over his nose and mouth, and Sherlock's arm shoved something over his shoulder into Smith's face -- something small and silver that made a _pssht_ noise several times in rapid succession. Smith threw his head back with a gasp, and John felt his opponent's arm abruptly weakening. He let Sherlock pull him away from Smith, who staggered and collapsed, eyes fluttering shut.

John yanked Sherlock's hand from his face and sucked in air, turning to look at his friend. "What did you just -- "

"A dose of his own medicine," grinned Sherlock, holding up a little breath-spray canister. "Chloroform. Nice and fast-acting, must be quite concentrated. I nicked it out of his shirt pocket." Sherlock's nose was bleeding, but in the glow of victory he did not seem to have noticed; certainly he looked surprised when John handed him a tissue.

The crowd around them had drawn back to give them room to tussle, and now they seemed to feel that the show was over; several of them started, tentatively, to clap, and within seconds most of them were applauding. The approbation only increased in volume when Sgts. Harris and Morrison, Lestrade in their wake, cut through the crowd to lead the rapidly-recovering Smith away in handcuffs, and everyone realized they had witnessed the real thing.

Sherlock and John were nearly swamped by admiring fans; the entire crowd seemed to feel the need to shake their hands and congratulate them. Sherlock, who accepted praise so readily from John, seemed to shrink under the public's attention, until John almost suspected Sherlock was trying to hide behind him -- ridiculous, given the disparity in their heights.  

"Pinch the bridge of your nose harder," John muttered to Sherlock during a brief pause, passing him another tissue. "If you do it right-handed, they'll stop trying to shake your hand." Sherlock shot him a look of such naked gratitude that John was hard-pressed to keep a straight face as the crowds advanced again. John handed out the new business cards until his pockets were empty, and when the two police sergeants returned to collect witness statements, he turned and shepherded the Consulting Detective -- none too unwilling to leave -- out towards the turnstiles.

"That was tedious," Sherlock grumbled in his ear, crowding up close behind him on the stairs.

"That's what you get for making a scene in public," John returned over his shoulder, still riding the adrenaline high from the fight, and secretly pleased that Sherlock had behaved as well as he had; he hadn't actually fled, and he had refrained from deducing (out loud, at least) that anyone in the crowd was having an affair, so John was inclined to call it a win. "I told you those cards were a good idea. You'll have loads more traffic on your blog when this gets out."

"All of it inane, no doubt." Sherlock sniffed and probed at his face. The blood was still running sluggishly, so he refolded the tissue and pinched it over his nose again.  

Lestrade met them as they came out onto the dusky pavement.

"Nicely done, gentlemen," he congratulated, holding out an evidence baggie for Sherlock to drop the chloroform cannister into. "You both okay?"

"Fine, thanks," replied John. Sherlock made a noise of protest, and he added, "Don't be such a baby, you won't bleed to death."

Sherlock harrumphed at him. "You have an email waiting for you," he informed the snickering Lestrade, waving his phone at him. "Put the audio together with the CCTV from the station, and you'll have a pretty iron-clad confession."

"You were recording us the whole time?" John demanded, and Sherlock shot him the look that meant _please, don't be so dense._ Its ferocity was a little dimmed by the reddened tissue. Sherlock seemed to realize this, and he pitched it into the nearest bin with a scowl. John fished out a clean one and offered it, but it was waved away.

"You know," Lestrade mused, his face exaggeratedly innocent, "I think I'll accidentally forward that email to the Chief Superintendant."

"Good idea," agreed Sherlock in an equally bland voice, but he was grinning almost as much as John was. Vindication was a heady feeling.

Lestrade thanked them again and climbed into the squad car that pulled up at the curb; John could see him consider offering a ride, and deciding against it. He waved at them as the car drew away; John nodded in return, and Sherlock ignored him.

As they waited for a cab to appear, Sherlock turned to him. "I must say," he remarked with a penetrating look, "for a man as scrupulously honest as you are, you give a very good imitation of a frantic civillian concerned for his friend. Your performance was most impressive. I'm touched."

"Not as impressive as yours," John replied frankly, ignoring the personal dig. "How on earth did you learn to fake a heart attack like that? You almost gave me one, I thought there was actually something wrong with you!"

Sherlock smiled at the compliment. "Years of practice."

"You practice having heart attacks?" John shook his head. "Of course you do."

"Not heart attacks specifically, but playing sick, yes. I was a champion malingerer at school: class was boring, the teachers were dull, and the library seemed a better use of my time. I had fainting spells regularly all over the grounds, until Mycroft made me stop. It's all mind over matter, John; the transport will obey the intelligence, if you exercise it enough." He sniffed away a small threatening trickle of blood, and John pretended not to see.

"I notice you didn't let him get the stethescope on you, though. Not even the great Sherlock Holmes can force his own heart to skip a beat, eh?"

"No," admitted Sherlock with a moue of irritation, and John laughed at him. "The radial pulse is easy enough to suppress," he continued, and John's smile died as his own heart faltered at the memory, "but the heart itself is an organ over which I have little or no control. Unfortunately."

There was silence as the cab drew up at Sherlock's imperious wave. The only words spoken were the destination, and John's quiet, "Here," as he handed over the tissue again when the surreptitious sniffing grew more and more frequent.

When they got to the flat, Sherlock immediately disappeared into the bathroom, emerging in his dressing gown with a clean face ten minutes later. He was met with an ice pack wrapped in a wet towel, at which he raised an aristocratic eyebrow. "Really, John? I'm fine."

"Do you want a black eye in the morning?" John demanded. "Your nose isn't broken, but it's already swelling up, and I can tell it hasn't actually stopped bleeding. Now sit down."

Sherlock dropped into his customary armchair with bad grace, slumping rebelliously, but he put the cold pack to his nose. He jerked away when John's hand brushed his hair. "Stop that. I'll concede the ice is a good idea, but I refuse to submit to mollycoddling."

"I'm not _petting_ you, you berk -- you hit your head on the floor, remember?" John reminded him, amused. "Lean your head forwards." Sherlock tucked his chin into his chest, and John probed with gentle fingers over the back of his skull. His hair was surprisingly soft (must be that expensive shampoo he used) and, more importantly, there was no sign of swelling. "Nary a bump. You'll be fine. But just in case -- " Sherlock yelped as John pressed a second ice pack to the back of his head. "Sorry. Bit sore?"

"No," Sherlock groused, "bit _cold._ How am I supposed to think with frostbite on both ends of my brain?"

"I guess you're not," replied John complacently. "For the next twenty minutes, at least, you'll just have to sit still and wait." Seeing as Sherlock made no move to hold the compress to the back of his own head, John perched himself on the arm of the chair and leaned over to snag the remote from the table, settling in to hold it for him. Sherlock grumbled into his towel as John flicked through channels, deciding on a nature programme that they could both enjoy for the stunning visuals without objecting to the science or deducing the animals' motivations.

John drew his hand away as Sherlock shifted position; he tucked his feet under him, folding his long legs into an impossibly small space, so that he could balance the ice on his knees and simply rest his face against it. He hugged his shins and settled in, a sulking gargoyle. He sighed morosely but did not offer further protest when John returned the cold pack to the back of his head.

When John checked his watch at the end of the programme and decided the ice could come off, he realized the room had been very quiet for at least ten minutes. Upon closer inspection, Sherlock appeared to be snoring gently into his knees, hands lax around his ankles. The towel under his nose was no more than cool to the touch, so John elected not to disturb him by removing it. God only knew when the next sleep would come for Sherlock; as soon as he found another case, he would be off at a run, regardless of the hour.

John stood, stiffly, and bit back a groan as he stretched. Between carrying shopping, impromptu arm-wrestling matches with large angry men, and sitting in a twisted position for twenty-five minutes, his shoulder was beginning to complain. He worked it through a series of his old range-of-motion exercises as he quietly took his laptop into the kitchen to type up his notes on the case.

After half an hour of staring at the screen while the cursor blinked at him attentively, he had nothing useful. How had this worked, all those years ago? How had he once started these blog entries? Perhaps he should start from the end and work his way back --

But starting from the end meant remembering Sherlock collapsing limply into his arms, blood dripping down his pale face and into his staring eyes -- wait, no, the nosebleed had come later -- and all of a sudden, John was kneeling on the pavement in front of Bart's, and it was three years ago, and Sherlock was falling --

"Jesus!" John thrust himself away from the table with a gasp as Sherlock appeared in the doorway, soggy towel in one hand and a crust of dried red around one nostril. It took him a couple of blinking seconds to realize that the blood covering the rest of Sherlock's face was a memory, not a fact.

Sherlock frowned at him. "John?"

"Sorry, I -- you startled me."

The detective's gaze sharpened. "No, that's not it. Something else is wrong. Your respiratory rate is so elevated I could hear it from the other room. You were -- " His eyes flicked from John's clenched fists to the open laptop on the table, where the empty text box sat next to other more painful completed blog entries, and his face fell open. "Oh. Flashback?"

John laughed, pressing shaking hands to his face. He should know better, by now, than to think he could hide anything. "Yeah. You'd think they'd stop happening, wouldn't you? Now that I know it wasn't real."

"Hmm," responded Sherlock, but John was not ready to look at him again yet, so he could not tell what, if anything, that meant.

After a long moment, Sherlock drew a careful breath. "I am sorry, you know," he said quietly, "that I had to go to such lengths to convince you. If I could have spared you this, I would have."

John dropped his hands and stared at him. Sherlock looked distinctly uncomfortable, the vulnerability twice as noticeable in a man normally so self-assured. It made John want to cross the kitchen and embrace him -- hell, he wanted to on his own account right now anyway -- but Sherlock Holmes did not hug.

So he settled for a smile (which, judging from the answering flicker of expression that crossed Sherlock's face, was not an entirely _successful_ smile, but it was the best he could do) and said, "I know."

Sherlock studied him for a long minute, plainly unconvinced.

"Seriously, it's okay," John insisted, wondering a little which one of them he was trying to reassure. "You're just going to have to be a little patient with me, all right? This isn't something you can fix for me. I need time to readjust. It's great having you back, really, and going on cases again is fantastic, I just -- it's bringing up a lot of things I thought I had buried."

"Like me?" suggested Sherlock with an uncertain grin, and John snorted with bitter laughter. It was a good thing he enjoyed gallows humour, he thought, shaking his head to clear it of the shining black of Sherlock's empty gravestone, because anyone else would have slugged the man by now.

"Let's go get dinner," he blurted, suddenly ravenous, not to mention in need of fresh air.

Sherlock's smile relaxed into something more natural. "Angelo's?"

"Yes," answered John firmly, "but only if Angelo already knows you're alive. I don't have the fortitude to sit through another tearful reunion tonight."

"You're safe," Sherlock assured him, steering him out of the kitchen and passing him his jacket. "I saw him weeks ago. He may be more surprised to learn that _you_ are still alive, in fact."

John laughed, a real laugh this time, and followed him down the stairs.

And if Sherlock noticed that he was limping, just a little, he had the sense not to mention it.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for any medical exaggerations or outright errors; I tried to do my research, but the internet and back episodes of House can only get you so far.  
> Also, not being a London native, I know full well I've made geographical and layout mistakes, for which I take full responsibility.  
> And, of course, a thousand thanks to Arthur Conan Doyle, from whose stories I have shamelessly stolen both character names and plot devices (ten points and a cookie to anyone who can pick them all out!)


End file.
